Lottery Dreams

Sometime in 2009, I was asked if I would be interested in handling the office lottery pool.  Well, it is actually just one of several pools I assume are going on since our office has 10 floors and about 1500 employees, but I think this is one of the bigger ones, if not the biggest.  I accepted the role as the lottery administrator and began collecting money whenever the jackpot got to over $125 million.  (I’ve since changed this to $150 million.)

(You know, getting on the bus this morning, I consciously tried to find a seat that would not be near where Deepthroat might sit.  I remember him sitting toward the middle, so I purposely sat near the back.  He is now sitting directly in front of me.)

They say lottery is tax for people bad at math, which is why I was surprised that even insurance employees, including actuaries and others who do a lot of work with insurance date, did lottery.  And dealing with them when they come to give me their $3 is kind of interesting.  “Good luck to us” is probably what I hear the most.

(I just moved to the last row.)

When I was a kid, I used to think, if everyone in America just gave me one penny, I would have almost $3 million.  Well, I know now that it would be nearly impossible to collect from everyone, and even if it was doable, the cost of delivering actual pennies from every corner of the state to my house would probably eat up most, if not all, of that $3 million.  But that is what lottery essentially is, except that giving is optional, cost is a dollar instead of a penny, and not all of the money goes to facilitating the lottery and the prize for the winner.

This post is really disorganized – I’m just jumping from thought to thought.  So I will finish with thought: what would I do if I won the lottery?  Well, if it’s less than $10 million, I wouldn’t quit my job, but I guess we would live in a nicer house.  I would also pay off all mortgages and debts of immediate family members.  I would take more exotic vacations and go out to nice restaurants.  Maybe a new car.  But besides that, I don’t think I would really splurge.  I don’t think I would freely spend money unless I had a sum that was really more than enough to cover every one of my family’s needs and wants.

And that is an example of the worst thing about buying $201 in lottery tickets for the office.  False hopes, as if 201 out of 178 million is really a good chance.  Jackpot was $355 million yesterday and although I haven’t checked, I would be surprised if we won more than $10 from our $201 investment.  Wasted time and energy.  But I guess we can all dream…

Tags: Lottery, Mega Millions, Office Pool